


on lost causes

by jdphoenix



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 15:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15799272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Sometimes trying is all you can do and you’ve just gotta hope it’ll be enough.





	on lost causes

 

_You'd think after all this time I'd be ready._ _But look at me._ _Stretching one moment out into a thousand ... just so that I can watch the snow._

 

 

After being late for class and getting chewed out by the professor, the only thing that can make today worse is a pop quiz. So, naturally, the professor pulls a stack of crisp, freshly printed pages from his bag.

Oh joy.

When it reaches her, Christine takes the stack and passes it on, already resigned to failing. But she’ll _try_ is the thing. Screw Yoda and his bullshit proverbs; sometimes trying is all you _can_ do and you’ve just gotta hope it’ll be enough.

Of course trying is a whole lot easier when the test isn’t written in Mandarin.

What the _fuck_?

She stares down at the page, confused, then looks around, wondering if maybe, somehow, she’s in the wrong class. Or maybe her asshole gastronomy professor moonlights in the foreign language department and he’s just got the wrong papers? Only … everyone’s filling out their quizzes. How can she be the only one who got the wrong thing?

“Pencils down!” the professor calls.

 _But we only just started_ , Christine wants to say, but she doesn’t because Stephen Strange has just appeared in the seat next to her.

Also she’s naked.

“Christine- _Oh_ , wow. Okay. One of those then.” He at least has the decency to hold up a hand, blocking most of her from view while he meets her eyes steadily. “Christine. You’ve got to focus. You’re dreaming.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” she snaps, dragging his hand down. She’s clothed again, thank God, but they’re still in her old gastronomy lecture hall. She looks around them at the now empty seats. “This isn’t a normal dream,” she says, half-observation, half-question. It’s the sort of statement she’s found herself making a lot since Stephen came back into her life.

“No, it’s not. That’s my fault.”

She gives him a look that should pretty clearly ask _what isn’t?_ for her. And he’s Stephen so there’s no shame in his expression. There is guilt though. Lots of it.

“What is it?” she asks. “Does this have anything to do with Tony Stark?”

He seems surprised. “You heard about that?”

She smiles. “More than a thousand people suddenly disappeared from the site of an alien invasion and reappeared in New Jersey? Kinda has Strange written all over it.”

He makes this sound. It’s not a laugh, not really. And that smile … it’s half-assed at best. She’s been worrying ever since she heard about Stark going missing. If Stephen really was involved in all of that, is he in the same trouble Stark is?

“Why are you here?” she asks, feeling her own smile start to flag. “Why visit in my dreams instead of just popping in like you like to do? It’s not like you ever worried about making me lose sleep before.”

Her joke doesn’t land.

“Christine,” he says and she knows it’s bad. Getting the call from the EMTs it was one of their own in the car crash bad. Finding an empty apartment after their last fight bad. Hearing him call her name while he bled out from a chest wound bad.

“I can’t,” he sighs. “I mean. I _can_ -”

The tone, the one that says _I’m the amazing Stephen Strange, I can do anything_ , brings back some of her smile.

“-but it’s difficult at this distance, harder working between gravitational fields, there’s more to account for, and I need my strength.”

It goes unsaid that _this_ takes strength too, talking to her like this. But he’s making time for it, wasting energy on her. He takes her hand and she can’t help but think about scrubbing up after she failed to save his friend, the way he reached for her then like she was an anchor. And then he let her go because he had to and she let him, she _sent him off_ to fight a war.

She braces herself to do it again.

“You’re always about taking that chance,” he says, his thumb sliding easily over her knuckles. She wonders if that’s just time doing its thing, healing wounds, or if here, in her dreams, he never has to struggle. “I’d say no to anyone I thought I couldn’t fix but you-” his grip tightens- “you never met a lost cause you wouldn’t try to save.”

“That’s the job,” she says softly.

It’s an old conversation between them, one that’s changed in the last few years. She wonders sometimes if it would be that way if he’d never gone off and found his new purpose or if that last worst fight would’ve been enough to soften this particular sharp edge of his. Guess she’ll never know.

As it is, he nods in agreement where once he would’ve laughed derisively. “I’ve seen the possibilities, studied hundreds of potential outcomes for this,” he says. “There’s only one where we win.”

“Okay.”

He smiles sadly. “Like it’s just that simple?”

She shrugs. “You said it yourself: I’m about taking the chance.”

“That’s just it. It’s a _chance_. And to have any hope all, we’ve gotta lose first.”

She rolls her eyes. “Like that thing in Hong Kong?”

“I never should’ve told you about that,” he says quickly.

“No, you should not have,” she agrees, laughing because the alternative is worse. “But you were exceptionally drunk so it’s understandable.” She drops back into the uncomfortable seat, willing it to become something with actual cushioning. And it works. Yay. “Lose how? Do you have to die again?”

She means it as another joke. Turns out it’s not.

“Me,” he says sadly, “and half the population.”

Her heart constricts. “Of New York?” That’d explain why he’s here; he’s trying to get her out. As if she’d ever.

But his expression says no, it’s worse than just New York. She remembers who he’s with, the level of danger that seems to follow the Avengers everywhere.

“The world?” she asks, her voice barely audible in the emptiness of the lecture hall.

“The universe,” he corrects gently. He falls back into his own seat, made as comfortable as hers—she doubts it helps. “There isn’t even a _word_ for the number of deaths. I suppose they’ll have to invent one.”

Christine gives herself two heartbeats to let that sink in, to sink into the murky water of utter desolation and terror. And then she drags her fraying emotions into line. This is an emergency and she deals with those every day; it’s her damn _job_.

“And if you don’t take this chance?” she asks.

“Same thing,” he says helplessly. There was a time hearing that tone from him would’ve been on par with water into wine. Now, after all he’s been through, with what he’s _currently_ going through? It’s one of the worst things she’s ever heard. “The specifics of who will change depending on when and how Thanos gains the final stone, but that’s just cosmic cause and effect masquerading as random chance.”

She doesn’t know who Thanos is or what any of that means, but she doesn’t really have to know to give Stephen what he needs.

“So do it.”

He starts like that’s somehow not exactly what he came here to hear her say.

She takes his hand between hers. “I’m not saying go out there and throw your life away—I expect you to do everything you can to come back-” Her voice breaks before she can voice the two final words, the _to me_. Which is just as well. He hasn’t come home to her in … God, she doesn’t think he ever did. “But I know you. You wouldn’t be talking about this if you didn’t think it was the best shot we have.”

There’s something in his stare, something haunted that scares her worse than anything else so far.

“It will be undone,” he says, his voice a little too fast, like he’s trying to make her understand. “If this works, everyone who dies won’t have died at all.”

“Like Hong Kong.” If this is how all his epic battle plans are gonna go, he’d better hope word doesn’t start spreading or the bad guys will see it coming.

“No,” he says. “I was the only one in danger there. This is … more.” He’s staring still, like this is the last time he’ll ever-

Oh. _Oh_. She gets it now. 

“Stephen,” she says, turning her hands around his. “What did you come here for?”

Now he _looks_ helpless and she wishes, more than anything, that she could keep him here. Here, in her dreams, where his hands are unscarred, where it’s just the two of them, where the world can do what it wants.

He searches for words for a moment, searches and stares, drinking her in for what might be the last time.

“Forgiveness?” he says finally, with a shrug like even he didn’t know it until he said it.

She reaches out to cup his cheek in her hand and he leans into the touch. He wants to stay, she thinks, just as much as she wants him to.

She looks down at their still joined hands. He’s wearing the watch she gave him so long ago. On the back, pressed to his skin, is her promise that only time would tell the depth of her love for him. If this is gonna be their end, she can’t be selfish with him now. No matter how much she wants to.

“You always had it.” She lifts his hand, presses her lips to the back of his hand just above the watch. “Now go. Turn that lost cause around. And I’ll see you when it’s done.”

His lips twitch and in his eyes she sees a swell of pride. And then he’s gone.

 

 

A moment later Christine gasps awake. The on-call room is dim around her but she can hear the familiar chaos of the ER just outside. A glance at her phone shows she’s barely slept thirty minutes, but she rolls to her feet anyway. If she’s gonna die today, she’ll do what good she can in the meantime.

She knows Stephen will be doing the same.


End file.
